Many attempts have been made to devise a high production system for detecting defects in elongated articles such as raw potato strips and the like and for removing the defects as the articles are being processed. Many systems have been constructed for optically inspecting the articles and for separating the articles based upon whether or not the optical information indicates that the article contains a defect. Frequently the size of the defect may be quite small and the remainder of the article may be quite satisfactory. Additional processing of the article to remove the defect requires additional equipment and additional handling which increases the costs of processing.
Attempts have been made to process elongated articles such as elongated sliced potatoes utilized for frozen "french fries" in which the elongated articles are aligned in transversely spaced lanes and passed beneath individual lane electro-optical cameras for inspecting the french fries for defects. If defects are encountered, one or more knives on a rotating wheel is projected from the wheel to cut the defect from the article. One such device is illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,543,035 and 3,664,337 granted to Raye et al on Nov. 24, 1970 and May 23, 1972 respectively. Because of limitations of the equipment, it is very difficult to process large volumes utilizing the equipment illustrated in such patents. An important limitation is the difficulty of positioning and processing the elongated potato strips in very close proximity to each other and for moving the articles past the electro-optical inspection station and the wheel cutting station at high speeds.
Along a similar line, U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,488 granted Sept. 19, 1978 to Karl Ulrich Vornfett describes an apparatus for moving raw potato sticks past sensing equipment for sensing whether or not sticks have defects and then past a cutting system having a pair of vertically movable cutters that move down through a slot in a trough conveyor for cutting out the defect with the defect segment being removed below the trough. Such a system is quite slow and incapable of handling high volume production. As the knife blades pass down through the product, the product remains substantially stationary and cannot regain its forward movement until the knives are retracted.
Of general background importance is the equipment described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,186,836 granted Feb. 5, 1980 to Norman B. Wassmer et al. Such a system is directed to a sorting apparatus for placing potato segments uniformly on a conveyor bed in substantially a one layer configuration and passing the conveyor bed of segments underneath scanning electro-optical cameras for detecting defects or dark spots on the potato pieces. Vacuum nozzles downstream of the scanning cameras are then activated for picking up and sorting the defective articles from the nondefective articles. Although such a system is capable of sorting product on a large volume basis, it is not concerned with removing the defects from the remainder of the product.
One of the principal objects of this invention is to provide high volume, accurate inspection and cutting equipment for detecting color or shade variance defects in elongated articles such as potato sticks or strips and then removing the defects while the sticks or articles are moving.
A still further object of this invention is to provide high volume inspection and cutting apparatus for removing defects from elongated articles with equipment that is quite inexpensive relative to its capacity.
These and other objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment.